Four SAP S/4HANA Transformation Tools for Consultants and Project Managers

DXaaS Mar 10, 2022

Introduction
Understanding SAP S/4HANA
Panaya
Haneya
KTern.AI
Datavard
Conclusion

Introduction

For most organizations using SAP ECC, it’s no longer a question of whether to migrate to SAP S/4HANA but rather when to migrate to SAP S/4HANA.

However, there are a lot of options and pathways on how to get to SAP S/4HANA. Choosing the right path to SAP S/4HANA, depending on the business scenario, is essential to stay competitive in today’s digital era. Depending on the deployment model (Cloud or On-premise) and the requirements of the business, there are three possible scenarios to adopt SAP S/4HANA.

1. New Implementation

This is called as the greenfield approach and is a new installation of SAP S/4HANA either on-premise or on the cloud. This SAP S/4HANA adoption method is ideal if re-engineering and process simplification based on latest innovations are your chief focus.

2. System Conversion:

SAP S/4HANA System Conversion is basically a lift-and-shift methodology. It involves a tool-based technical conversion from SAP ECC. This process changes the existing system into an SAP S/4HANA system.

3. SAP Landscape Transformation

SAP Landscape transformation is a selective data migration to the new SAP S/4HANA platform. It involves picking and selecting a few or all entities and migrate them to SAP S/4HANA platform

While going for a new implementation is the fairly easier option, a system conversion can be really tricky. There may be several customized legacy environments in SAP ECC and one can encounter considerable complications during the migration process to SAP S/4HANA. Basis consultants have a vital role to play in the conversion process. They have to find out if the system can be converted to SAP S/4HANA

However, there are quite a few tools available in the market to ease the system conversion process and ensure a smooth transition. These tools not only aid the system conversion process from start to finish, but also ensure complete visibility and governance throughout the technical and functional aspects of the project. Below mentioned are some of the best tools available in the market today.

Three possible scenarios to adopt SAP S/4HANA

New Implementation - This is called as the greenfield approach and is a new installation of SAP S/4HANA either on-premise or on the cloud.

System Conversion - SAP S/4HANA System Conversion is basically a lift-and-shift methodology

SAP Landscape Transformation - SAP Landscape transformation is a selective data migration to the new SAP S/4HANA platform.

Understanding SAP S/4HANA

A modern business suite called SAP S/4HANA was created to make it easier for companies to function in the digital economy.
It provides a personalised user experience and is built on the SAP HANA platform with the SAP Fiori user interface.
In SAP S/4HANA, all the features of the regular SAP Corporate Suite are included, along with some brand-new features that improve user experience, expedite business operations, and provide real-time insights.

Panaya

Panaya enables companies to be more agile in addressing constant change and ensures continuous quality throughout the SAP S/4HANA project. It is a tool that was designed to safeguard the journey to SAP S/4HANA.

Panaya’s SAP S/4HANA Discovery Pack  provides a detailed assessment report and insights for SAP customers who want to start their journey to SAP S/4HANA. The Key takeaways of the assessment would be:

Full visibility and clarity on the different possible routes to SAP S/4HANA including HANA DB, SAP Core Finance, and SAP S/4HANA conversions.
Impact Simulation Report on the different possibilities. This will help the C Level Directors and Managers to take the right decision and tailor the optimal path for their organization.
Separate HANA Database migration and S/4HANA Finance migration paths assessment. The separate assessments will help organizations who have decided to adopt SAP S/4HANA in a phase-wise manner.
Enriched simulation including code optimization analysis. This ensures that the custom code is compatible and works fast and optimal on the new HANA DB.

Apart from the SAP S/4HANA Discovery Pack, Panaya provides a range of other tools to ensure continuous quality throughout the SAP S/4HANA system conversion project, thus enabling companies to be more agile in addressing constant change. Organizations can leverage Panaya for each phase of their SAP S/4HANA journey, eliminate the guesswork and ensure efficiency and quality:

Thorough Impact Assessment for the shift to SAP S/4HANA, automatically within 48 hours
Accurate scoping of test efforts. Focus and testing the right thing as early as possible in the conversion project lifecycle
End-to-end Test Management solution to manage Functional testing and support Business and functional testers.
Automation of mundane activities and accelerated manual testing using techniques such as defect capturing, effortless documentation, and test evidence.
Ensures collaboration across multiple geographies, testers and platforms.
Averts duplicate efforts, and repetitive defects resulting in Tight workflow integration.
Full Control and real time visibility over Test cycles progress. This immensely helps in identifying bottlenecks, idle time and test distribution.

Haneya

Haneya is a tool developed by VisionSoft for integration with SAP S/4HANA and is certified by SAP itself. It is the key accelerator for Suite on HANA (SoH) and SAP S/4HANA Migration.

The pre-packaged migration solution encapsulates all migration activities together and handles the HANA migration in an automated fashion with nominal human interaction.
The proven methodologies, and capabilities enables organizations in their journey to SAP HANA. The tool facilitates the entire system conversion process and makes it smooth, rapid, and easier for organizations to take advantage of SAP’s in-memory database HANA.
It adopts HANA’s column-oriented capabilities as early as possible and makes the conversion very fast with minimal downtime, thus saving costs and improving Return on Investment.
The tool also supports single tenant and multi-tenant data migrations and also supports migrations with acquisitions and divestitures.
There is also an extension of HANEYA called the HANEYA Optimizer which identifies custom objects, reports and scan for conflicts or obsoletes in the current SAP system to speed up their system conversion process. After scanning, the tool rectifies and replaces them automatically to make the custom objects compatible with SAP S/4HANA.
This tremendously reduces the human intervention and accelerates the system conversion process by almost 30-50%. It also reduces the resources required by 70-80%.

KTern.AI

KTern is the 1st of its kind Digital Workplace for SAP Projects. KTern is empowered with SAP Activate to automate activities in SAP S/4HANA system conversion. KTern works on a reliable and secured environment. It ensures the connectivity with only the Business Application Layer of the customer's SAP ERP landscape.

As the SaaS application suite, KTern is developed with high computing potential, effective processing mechanisms and established security principles. This ascertains authentic output and time efficiency in the overall operations, which certainly makes KTern an assured business value driver.

An added advantage is that it processes the data strictly in its Business Application layer, displays the results and restrains from any connectivity with the database.

KTern's high computing potential and effective processing is driven by its Cloud Deployment, that makes it the perfect choice for customers considering the backup and recovery options, streamlined work flow, document control, greater control and flexibility in operations, secured integration, efficient productivity and easy-to-scale benefits.

KTern's security compliant principles are established with policy based behavioral monitoring and investigation with greater workload visibility. The Trust and Verify factor is enabled right from the physical to the network security that goes parallel with the privacy and security standards.

KTern is built based on SAP’s Activate Methodology to synchronize and work on multiple work streams and project phases whilst performing multiple cutover activities with Quality Gates.

Datavard

DATAVARD provides tools for all phases of SAP S/4HANA Migration.

The Datavard Fitness Test is an innovative software tool used for diagnosing and fixing complex SAP technical problems. This helped organizations reduce their data load times and cut total storage size by terabytes, generating payback in under three months. The Fitness Test analyzes complex SAP Landscapes such as SAP ERP, SAP BW, CRM and SRM, identifies its strengths and weaknesses and offers actionable insights.

The check covers:

Compatibility check of business functions
Impact assessment on existing business processes
Real estimation of required HANA hardware
Custom code check

Datavard Insights is another tool which discovers what the SAP user actually need. It analyzes and illustrates user behaviour, system performance and actual data usage. The tool is also used to combine various system information and decide upon the archiving and housekeeping potential for the cold SAP data. This information would be highly useful in reducing the data footprint while migrating to SAP S/4HANA.

Apart from the above two, there is another tool called Datavard Validate, which is an automated testing tool. Testing is an extremely important part of any software change or upgradation. With the help of this tool, automatic testing is done, which ensures a smooth and secure transition to SAP S/4HANA.

Conclusion

SAP S/4HANA migration through SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA System Conversion is a tricky project to complete for any organization.

The historical data, the custom code, the add-ons, the functional LoBs, and many more technical and functional parameters need to be studied to verify if the project is feasible to undertake. Therefore, it is also imperative to comprehensively study the business, functional, and technical impact of the SAP S/4HANA migration. Completing all the assessments mentioned above helps to understand the “as-is” and “to-be” business scenarios. In addition, it helps to accurately estimate the effort and timeline required for the SAP S/4HANA System Conversion project.

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